1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a joint connector for electrically connecting plural joint terminals inserted into a connector housing with each other, and to a joint terminal to be used with the joint connector.
2. Background Art
A Patent Literature 1 (Japanese Utility Model Application Laid-Open No. H6-36268) discloses one of prior art joint connectors. As shown in FIGS. 7 and 8, the joint connector 50 includes a connector housing 51, and plural joint terminals 60 housed in the connector housing 51. Note that only one of the joint terminals 60 is shown in FIG. 7, and others of them are not shown in FIG. 7.
The connector housing 51 is provided with plural terminal chambers 53 segmented by partitions 52. A slit 54 is formed on each of the partitions 52.
The joint terminal 60 includes a wire-crimping portion 61 with which a wire W is connected, a terminal body 62 integrally provided with the wire-crimping portion 61, and a pair of contact tabs 63 integrally provided with the terminal body 62. The terminal body 62 is mainly constituted of a bottom wall 62a and a pair of sidewalls 62b. The terminal body 62 is inserted into the terminal chamber 53 and thereby housed in the terminal chamber 53. The contact tabs 63 are bent laterally outward from upper ends of the sidewalls 62b, respectively.
The two contact tabs 63 of the joint terminal 60 are located in the adjacent slits 54, respectively. In a slit 54, a one-side contact tab 63 of a joint terminal 60 contacts with an other-side contact tab 63 of a next joint terminal 60. The contact tabs 63 in the slit 54 are overlapped so as to contact with each other. Therefore, the neighboring joint terminals 60 are electrically contacted with each other.
According to the prior art joint connector 50, the neighboring joint terminals 60 are directly contacts with each other, electrically, so that no additional component is needed for connecting the neighboring joint terminals 60, such as an interposed conductive member and components associated with the conductive member.